Last week, the Bruins went in to Air Canada Centre in Toronto riding high.  They won five in row and they were showing improvement in their goal production, defense, special teams, and goaltending.  Granted, all of these good improvements were against soft opponents like the New Jersey Devils, Edmonton Oilers, Florida Panthers, and the Buffalo Sabres, but they were baby steps in the right direction.  I thought they were playing as well as they could without their Captain Zdeno Chara and first line center David Krejci.

How naive was that?

They were blown right out of the ACC in Toronto 6-1.  Tuukka Rask was pulled after giving up four goals on sixteen shots, three of them coming in about a three minute span at the beginning of the second period.

Then, there was the very next night at Bell Centre in Montreal.  That night, I’m sure, made every Bruins fan (myself included) throw up in his month a bit.  After taking a 1-0 lead at the tail end of what was looking like a promising first period, the Habs scored five unanswered goals on route to a 5-1 victory.  Tough to take, right?

These blow outs in back nights, to me, proves that the Bruins were never making any baby steps towards anything and they cannot beat good teams.  If you think about it, during the streak, how did they beat those soft teams?  They barely squeaked by Florida and Buffalo in overtime and they were getting outplayed by Edmonton until they exploded in the third period.  The New Jersey game was the only game in the streak which I put a fair amount of stock into.  But, even that game was deceiving because Devils goalie Corey Schneider couldn’t make a save all night, having only been able to make 19 saves on just 23 shots.  No matter how awesome the Seth Griffith goal looked, Schneider has to get his pad down on that one!  Then, when they played real teams in Toronto and Montreal, they got their doors blown off.

All of that aside, I think the most damning of the events in the last week was Tuukka Rask’s performance.  To me, one of the brightest spots during the streak was the play of Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask.  During the win streak Rask was getting better, stopping 95 of 102 shots faced.  Also, he was actually really good in the first period against Toronto, making twelve saves in a period which saw the leafs dominate.  Then, once again, Tuukka collapsed, giving up three goals in three minutes and fourteen seconds.  Yet another setback for the struggling bruins goalie.

I know what you’re thinking.  “Tom, it’s only november.  They have plenty of time to get their act together.”  While absolutely true, I’m wondering if the the Bruins have a good enough team to get back on track.  What have they really shown us in the last few weeks that tells us that they have a good team?  Is it their lack of grit and experience on the back end?  Is it their lack of goal scoring from every single one of their forward lines(Even with David Krejci)?  Is it the inconsistency of their goaltender?

As a Bruins fan, I hate being this negative and I really hope that they can pull it together but, right now, it doesn’t look like that they can.  However, I’ve been wrong before.